


Glass Memories

by emeralddarkness



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen, M/M, the 'not really that shippy' ship fic i guess??
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 09:18:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8885350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emeralddarkness/pseuds/emeralddarkness
Summary: Primarily bookverse. Bard first sees the Elvenking when he's young.





	

The Elvenking did not belong in Laketown: his presence there was as foreign as the piles of gems and gold hidden in the mountain would have been strewn among the refuse of fish. Even the common elves did not often come down the river to the city abut with their realm, and as Bard looked up at their king, he could see why. They did not belong here.

His clothes were fine in comparison to those of the townsfolk (though that was a poor enough measure, and Bard had no experience in judging the quality of cloth) but that wasn’t what set him apart. It was _him_. He wasn’t a man, despite the similarities in statue and form he held to one; there would be, _could_ be, no mistaking the two, not ever. The King was like pure water – not the tame, dull, murky stuff of the lake, but something high and wild and trembling with light from a spring of the stars. He could barely breathe for the sight of him.

Bard began to understand, in that moment, why men so often spoke of elves with such a mix of reverence and fear. Being too close would be dangerous, you might drown, but Bard was suddenly sure that would be the death he would have wanted, had he known of it before now.

The boy took one hesitant step towards the elf lord, who was standing at some distance tall and proud on one of the raised walkways, and as though the King had felt it he turned for a moment and looked back with eyes that were the exact color of the forest - _all_ the forest, somehow, a summation of its parts in symphony. The King looked at the boy, very cool, and proud, and untouchable as the wind through the trees, and then with inhuman grace turned back to the Master, and continued his discussion. Behind him, Bard took one hesitant step backwards, and then another, and then turned and ran all the way to his father’s house, where he slid to the floor and stared at the walls without seeing them.

The elves were gone again when Bard finally drew enough of himself back together to creep back out and try for another look, gone so completely and so suddenly that it was almost as if they’d never been in Laketown at all. He spent the rest of the day combing through the town, running across boats and under nets and finally down to the edge of the town, where the mouth of the river could just be seen through the swirls of mist on the lake, and further than that, right on the edge of the horizon, a dark line which was the beginnings of the haunted forest. He stared at it, trying to find anything of the boats or rafts of the elves until the sun was very nearly ready to set, until he finally had to turn back to home. Despite running his father was already seated at the table when he arrived, his heavy black boots removed, and his mother scolded him for being late.

“Did _you_ see the elves?” he asked, hopping on one foot as he struggled to take his own boots off, and his father nodded once, curtly. “Do you know why they came?”

“Trade agreements,” he said as Bard finally succeeded in wrestling one boot off and nearly knocked himself over with the effort, then at a look from his mother sat down to finish removing the other. “The King wanted more apples, or somesuch thing. More work for us.”

“That will be a mercy and a blessing, if it’s true,” his mother said. “There’s enough who need it.” His father nodded once more with a grunt of agreement and both apparently considered that the end of the matter.

Bard considered it that night as he lay in bed. Trade agreements, which from what his father had said sounded as though they’d been settled. He wouldn’t be back, then, though this wasn’t unexpected. The elves, other than those who were raftmen or the occasional messenger, did not often leave their forest – rarely more than once a generation, if that – and the forest was far too dangerous for men to venture into in search of them. The Elvenking had looked it, Bard thought as he took out the memory of that afternoon carefully, high and wild and fey, untamed and untamable as the land or the lake. His last thought before he drifted off was the memory of those eyes, dark and light and deep as the forest. He did not dream.

Bard did not expect to see the Elvenking again, so he was not disappointed (or at least only secretly, and hid that disappointment even from himself) when the years marched by one by one like soldiers and he did not reappear. He didn’t belong. Bard had known from the moment he saw him that the King did not belong in Laketown, less even than the raft-elves who would appear with the dawn and vanish again shortly after, who laughed and sang as they pushed the empty barrels down the river and the full ones back up again, or the far less frequent parties who would instead bring down goods in payment – furs and weapons and beautiful things – and none of them belonged either. There was too much strangeness in them. Elves did not age as did men, everyone knew that much, but there _was_ still something startling to see the same faces year after year in slow rotation and see that none changed despite the changing of the world all around them. Men moved through the world, that was right and proper and exactly as expected, but the elves were different, they remained still as the world moved around them. It was hard to imagine them belonging anywhere.

“Tell me what the forest is like?” he’d asked one of the raft-elves one evening after he’d begun work as a guard, which was years after the elf king had become nothing but a distant, delicate memory to be taken out from time to time and examined like a glass curiosity. “You hear stories, but nobody ever seems to go there.” He was one of the regulars from the rafts, an elf he’d seen in glimpses for almost his entire life, distinguishable from his companions by hair that was black as a raven’s back - far darker than any of the others who came down with him.

“A,” said the elf, who had a timeless face but did not have eyes like the forest, “yes, there is a reason for that. It was lovely, once, but that is many years ago, and it has become very dark. It is dangerous even for those we would welcome, and they are not many, these days.”

“Are the stories true?” he’d asked, and the elf had laughed at him.

“I know not which stories you speak of, but I suspect they are true, or close enough to heed their warnings. Stay away from the wood.”

“That much I know,” he’d said, but the elf was already moving away through the crowd like a fish through water, back to the boats, and he couldn’t leave his post. He’d never been in the forest, nor had anyone in living memory, but they knew about the monsters. Every so often there was still a disappearance from someone who tried poking around, which tended to shut up anyone who tried saying there was nothing to fear but the elves, who had spread the rumors to keep the wealth of the place to themselves, because after all the King had to get his gold from _somewhere_.

So life went, and so it might always have gone, had not the dwarves come.

Life in Laketown was never unexpected: day in and day out, year after year, everything stayed exactly the same as Bard grew older, as he married, as he had a son of his own. Old fat men only became older and fatter, until they died and were replaced by their successors to begin the cycle again, and come summer, without the cold to deaden the scent, everything always smelled like fish. The dwarves, thirteen of them and a funny little fellow who wasn’t quite a dwarf but could have been if he’d had a beard, had appeared from nowhere in the middle of the night as summer turned to autumn. Their leader had marched into the town past a crew of startled guards claiming to be Thorin, son of Thrain, son of Thror, the King Under the Mountain, and the comfortable routine had dissolved into a hubbub of excitement.

That had seemed dangerous to Bard, but no one else had been inclined to listen, much less agree. Worse was when the raft elves had come forward to say that the dwarves had been prisoners of the King, who presumably had been holding them for a reason, and probably an important one. “Stop being so grim,” they’d laughed, “you know as well as we do that it’s never come to anything in the past.” The elves were denied their claim by the Master, who’d turned an ear to excitable fools who’d begun to speak of prophecies instead of to reason. Bard had been sure no good would come of it, but even he hadn’t known the magnitude of misfortune that would be brought until the sky began to burn, and everything else burn with it.

The dragon was stooping and diving and bells were ringing and women screaming and children crying as everything turned to fire, but Bard was in the thick of it, urging the archers to stay until their last arrow was spent. People were already diving into the water and falling out of boats, and it seemed like the world was ending. The town was surely lost, but perhaps not all of the people were, and that was what had sent Bard climbing to the highest wall for a final desperate chance, perhaps devoid of hope. It probably would have been a useless gesture if not for the thrush, who had whispered to wait, and if not for the moon, which had cast a light almost as bright as day on the dragon’s stomach as it turned, and shown among the glittering stones a hollow of darkness. Bard loosed his bow, and on the black arrow had soared, straight and true, and pierced the worm’s heart, and the lake when he fell had quenched his fire.

There were some who would doubtless say that a town and a few fields of crops were small price to pay for the slaying of a dragon, and perhaps they would be right, but it was high enough for those who had nothing else. Fathers and sons and brothers were dead and the survivors were wet and ragged and the children cried with trauma and with sorrow and with hunger, and if something wasn’t done they all would die. Some might still say that was a low price – dragons had destroyed enough, in their time, and Smaug the Terrible had eaten and ruined cities and kingdoms without paying a price in his own blood, but no matter what might be said, Bard was unwilling to let this one be paid. He still hardly knew where to begin, as people began to call on him to be their king, but the people needed to be dry and warm, and that was a beginning. They could start figuring out the rest of it later. And they did their best, but it would not have been enough, and many more would have died, if not for the elves.

No one had expected aid, not the Master, not the people, not Bard, but it had come all the same, first from rafts and then from wagons. Food, clothes, supplies to begin to repair some of the damage that the dragon had done, and the elves themselves who had brought it. It was surreal, at first, to see elves covered in blood treating the wounded, elves with their hair tied back and mud on their hands and sweat on their faces beginning to help to build at least temporary shelters; they had always seemed untouchable, yet here they were, as dirty as the lakemen, laughing and singing as they worked, and sitting with them at night around the fires when they stopped. It somehow made them real. Their presence injected hope and much cheer – especially, perhaps half a week later, when yet more had arrived, with more supplies, and their king at their head. Bard had not seen him since he was a boy. His memory had faded, but came back in a rush as he looked at him. The Elvenking seemed even more untouchable than before.

A part of that had been broken when he had he had swung down from his steed; although he landed lightly, his trailing hem had collected mud just as any other cloth would, and he had stepped with care as he had made his way to his horse’s head, and murmured to him before turning him loose. “He will wait for me,” Bard heard distantly in response to a boy’s question, who had come to take it to be picketed with the other animals, before he had raised his voice, and it was rich, and ringing, and commanded the attention of all who heard. “Where is the Master of the Men of the Lake? And who among you is the dragonslayer?”

“Our Master doesn’t deserve the title,” someone had yelled in response to the request, and from somewhere else began a chant of _King Bard, King Bard, King Bard the Dragonslayer!_ Bard felt tongue-tied and foolish as he was shoved forward by the crowd, had almost stumbled before he’d caught himself, and somehow had found himself standing next to the king, whose eyes were still as deep as the forest.

“It seems I owe you a debt of gratitude,” the King had said, and his voice had been rich as loam. Between it, and his eyes, and standing so close Bard found he could barely breathe again. “That debt I believe I have paid. Still, friends do not refuse aid when it is sorely needed, nor would they ask full payment for further advances. I will do what I can for you. Perhaps, in return, you will help me when the time comes.” It was worded as though it was a hope, but stated as though it was a certainty. Bard, when he found his voice, agreed without thinking.

“It will be many years before we can repay you and your people for all that you have done, Majesty,” he’d said, wondering if he was supposed to bow.

“There are many years to give, and I hope the Lakemen will still be here and strong for many more,” the King had replied, and Bard had once again found himself tongue-tied. For the first time, it seemed like there was something of a smile at the edges of the King’s eyes as the silence began to stretch, a little amused. “Still, in the mean time, is there anything else that is sorely needed now?”

“Only hope, sire, but you and your people have already given more of that then I ever dared to think.”

The Elvenking had smiled outright at that, it was perfectly polite and dazzling. “What else could a friend do, in present circumstances?” he had asked, expecting no answer. “Perhaps now that there is a beginning, we may discuss what is to come next.”

Bard, slowly, had shaken his head. “I am not the Master, sire,” he’d begun slowly ( _though I could be King, perhaps in Dale_ had come a thought, and his heart had thumped painfully). “The people pushed me forward, but I have not been given authority over them.” The King had not changed, then, become suddenly dismissive as Bard half feared he would, but only raised an eyebrow, as though to adjust to the information.

“Very well, then, I shall find the master. All the same, you have earned a place at the council as much as he, and I hope that you will take it.” He’d raised Bard’s chin with cool fingers, looking into his eyes again. “To be given the trust of your people is no small thing, Bard the Dragonslayer,” he had murmured, “and still greater is that by your hand the world was rid of an evil that had plagued this land for over a century. You are not, I think, destined to labor forever under the will of another.” Bard could only nod. The Elvenking had dropped his hand away again, and then to Bard’s shock, had inclined his head in a slight bow, as one King might perhaps greet another. “As you are not the Master of this people, perhaps you would help me find him,” he’d continued a moment later, and Bard had done his best to clear his head of cobwebs, and had led him through the crowd.

**Author's Note:**

> I actually don't ship the thing, so I really doubt I'll write any more of this pairing. It also makes this very firmly a oneshot.


End file.
